


guilty as charged

by carloabay (orphan_account)



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe, F/M, Pre-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:02:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28408938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/carloabay
Summary: “Allison,” Vanya said, staring intently at Allison’s left boot. “I didn’t write it.” Allison scoffed. Twice.
Relationships: Vanya Hargreeves & The Hargreeves, Vanya Hargreeves/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	guilty as charged

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jess10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jess10/gifts).



> Requested by Jess10:
> 
> _a chapter in which the hargreeves find out that vanya was forced to write the book maybe by her ex husband or boyfriend to keep her away from her siblings and that she was abused by him_

_Vanya was stumbling her way through the fifteenth bar of the first movement of Vivaldi's Winter when the doorbell rang_

_Tinny and timid. She set down her bow down on the couch, leaving a blurry line of rosin, tucked her violin under her arm, and moved to the door._

_"Vanya!" exclaimed Henry-from-the-bookshop. Pretty Henry, big-eyed curly-headed Henry with dimples. Vanya blinked at him._

_"Henry? Are you alright?" She checked the corridor. Henry held out a stack of books. Vanya blinked at him again._

_"Paperbacks."_

_"I didn't- order paperbacks," she answered, haltingly. "I'm sorry, wrong addr-"_

_"Cleaning out the back of the bookstore," Henry said, cheerfully. "They're free. You said you liked classics." He started to look confused, like she was telling him he had made a mistake. "I- sorry, probably not approp-"_

_"No," Vanya blurted, guiltily, and Henry's eyes shot excitedly into his hairline. "No, thank you. I mean-" she flushed, stumbling over her words- "yes, thank you. So much. You- you want to come in? It's kinda...cold out."_

_"Sure!" Henry chirped, and he hopped in over the threshold._

* * *

Vanya blinked at the sheet music, swimming in front of her eyes. In the distance, someone's doorbell rang, tinny and timid.

She raised her bow, wrist trembling, too stiff.

The music stumbled, screeched, and staggered into a haughty rhythm.

* * *

_"This is Henry," Vanya said, and Henry pressed his palm against hers. Diego looked Henry up and down, twice._

_"Hi. I'm Diego." There was a threat behind his eyes. Diego had never been subtle. Henry seemed to be holding back a scowl, and Vanya cleared her throat._

_"Um-"_

_"Nice to finally meet you," Henry snapped, and he stuck out his hand. Diego shook it with all the good grace of a pissed-off cat._

* * *

The phone chirped, jerking Vanya out of a shivery state, and she set her violin haphazardly down in its case with a clatter. She snatched the phone from the cradle and pressed answer.

"Hello?"

_"It's Allison."_

"Allison?" Stupidly, even with two words, barked down a fuzzy phone line, Vanya's heart raced with suddenly fluttering hope. "It's good to-"

" _We_ _need you to come back to he Academy._ "

"Oh." She shivered. "What happened?"

 _"Diego happened._ " The line went dead.

Vanya let the phone drift away from her ear, eyes sliding to the tufty rug on the floor.

"Oh," she whispered.

* * *

_"I can't stand them," Henry growled, pacing back and forth behind the couch. "God, Vanya can't you see it?"_

_"Henry, please-"_

" _They hate you! Everything they do is a ploy to leave you out! You're not on their level, so they push you over instead." He took a deep breath and kicked the loose plank by the wall. Vanya waited cautiously, until she was sure he'd boiled down._

_"It's not like that," she said softly._

_"It IS like that," Henry snapped. "And you know what?" He swung to face her, eyes gleaming with a hot reflection, like the ceiling was on fire. "We need to stop this. Once and for all."_

* * *

It was raining, great sheets of water, thundering down onto the sidewalk. People brushed past her, hurrying, hooded with umbrellas and caps and huge, rustling rain macs.

Vanya toiled around beneath the eaves of a teashop, shoes washed over in the gutter, soaking and freezing. 

She wasn't in a hurry, and she hadn't brought an umbrella.

* * *

_"It's great idea!"_

_"Please, stop," Vanya groaned, kneading her temples with the heels of her hands. "Henry, this is ridiculous."_

_"It's perfectly sane! Why shouldn't they get their come-uppance?"_

_"Look, I get that you think my whole childhood was one lonely house, but it's not their fault-"_

_"So whose fault was it? Look at you, Vanya. Every time you're around them, you stagger to get their praise, you kneel to be a goddamn footstool and if that isn't proof enough, I don't know what is." He paused, chest heaving, glaring through her, crazy-stare._

_She could see it herself, of course. The looks Diego shot her when she asked a question, that eye-roll Allison had perfected by now, even the empty vacant stare Klaus let fall on her instead of anything meaningful._

_"I'm right," Henry insisted. "You know I'm right. They treat you like shit. Time to let them know it's not okay."_

_"They don't treat me like shit," Vanya said shortly, uncertainly, and she shot to her feet and strode for the medicine cabinet, fingers tapping incessantly on her thigh._

* * *

The doorway smelt like must and mouldy regret. Vanya stepped over the threshold without a sound and closed the door behind her, shutting out the ambient sound of the rain.

There was chatter coming from the drawing room, low and unhurried. They'd started without her.

They could have just left her at home.

Vanya kicked the coat stand lightly, without any vigour behind it, and when she looked up, Pogo's figure was silhouetted against the light of the drawing room spilling from the doorway.

"Miss Vanya," he croaked.

"Hi, Pogo." 

He stepped aside, and motioned her forward. 

* * *

_"Good," Henry said, turning back to the typewriter. "Yes, that's good." He started typing again, that incessant clack-clack-clack, like bone on bone. Vanya slid her arms out of her jumper and huddled beneath it, curled up on the couch. "Got anything else?"_

_She stared at the cracked ceiling._

_"Vanya!" he snapped, and she jerked back into the present._

_"No, I-- I'm done...for today." Henry blinked at her, and she winced._

_"You can't be done, Vanya," he started, and his voice was dangerously low. "You can't be done until we've finished, and it's on shelves, and they've all read it and they start treating you like a real person again!" Vanya gripped her elbows under the jumper, heart pounding. Henry got himself under control. Vanya pressed a finger into the bruise on her thigh, and it ached back at her in protest._

I'm breaking, _her body said._

_"Vanya?"_

_"I don't-" she started to choke on the words, and Henry let out a huge sigh._

_"Don't be pathetic," he growled. Vanya looked up sharply._

_"I'm not being pathetic!"_

_"You are! You're letting the past get you down! You have to wield it instead!" His eyes were gleaming, not too dissimilar from the way they'd glinted at her over her threshold three weeks ago in the cold._

_"I don't want to wield it."_

_"You want them to know that you're weak? Forever?"_

_"I'm not weak."_

_"So help me write the goddamm book!" Henry exploded, knocking his chair aside and striding across the room towards her. Vanya cringed backwards, hating herself for giving in once again, but she nodded, quickly, and Henry cooled over just like that._

_Like nothing had happened._

_He righted the chair, sat, and began to type again._

_Bone on bone._

* * *

"Hi," she said, and it came out as a hiss of hoarse air. They all turned to look at her. "You said-"

"Yeah," Allison said heavily. There were bruised circles around her eyes, like she hadn't been sleeping. Luther hulked in the corner, arms crossed. Klaus had draped himself over one of the couches, a pink feather boa around his neck. "Diego got put away. We need to make bail."

Vanya did a quick calculation: rent was due in two weeks, grocery run tomorrow, electricity and phone bill had just come through.

"How much?" she asked. Luther raised his eyebrows. Allison looked her up and down. Something guilty festered into anger, like three years stuffed into half a second. "Why did you call me if you didn't think I'd want to help?" she snapped, and Allison looked taken aback.

"That's not-"

"Whatever," Vanya muttered, and she turned in her heel and left, water seeping from her shoes and onto the ancient polished planks.

* * *

_The manuscript was weighty and thick. Vanya traced her fingers over the title, and it wriggled queasily at her._

_"Finished," Henry breathed over the top of her head, fingers digging into her collarbone. Vanya wanted to wriggle out from his grip._

_"Henry, I-"_

_"Don't tell me you're getting cold feet now," Henry sighed. "What have I always said before? It's time for this, Vanya."_

_"I don't want to do it," Vanya said firmly, the words spilling off her tongue like they'd never been able to do._

_But Henry just gave her shoulder a bruising squeeze and moved away._

_"Yes, you do," he said._

_And that was that._

_Henry didn't last. But the book did._

* * *

"Vanya, you don't ever have a right to be angry." Vanya froze in her stead.

"Thought you were coming after me to console me," she said, bitter.

"You wouldn't deserve it," Allison snapped back. "We didn't ask you back here to accuse us of more shit, we asked because we needed to help Diego. I guess you've never been up for that, huh?"

Somehow, stupidly, Vanya's eyes were watering. She'd never been good at being angry, and now all she could conjure was the sickened title, spidery beneath her fingertips, and Henry's ruined skull, crushed between the steering wheel and the roof of the car.

Vanya turned, slowly, the rug wrinkling under her foot.

"Just so you know," Allison said, voice trembling. "I'd been thinking recently about how I wanted to forgive you." She waited, like Vanya was going to suddenly get on her knees and beg for it. 

As if she hadn't pleaded enough already.

Allison crossed her arms.

“Allison,” Vanya said, staring intently at Allison’s left boot.

"Hm," Allison said.

“I didn’t write it.” Allison scoffed. Twice.

"So who did?"

"I mean-" Vanya tried, shaking her head, starting over- "I helped. I didn't- want to."

"Okay," Allison said, and when Vanya looked up, her lips were pursed in disappointment. "You may be a prick, Vanya, but I didn't take you for a liar." It hurt. More than Vanya cared to admit, at least later.

"I'm not a liar," she tried, but her voice was vanishing again, smaller and smaller. "Henry committed suicide." 

Allison's eyes grew suddenly white with shock.

"What? Henry?"

"Yeah," Vanya squeaked. "Allison, please believe me. He made me do it." Allison searched her face, like she was trying to find an ounce of the past, of proof.

"I-"

"I can prove it," Vanya said, desperately. "This has been awful! It's been years, and you've all hated me, and I've hated myself, but I _swear_ I didn't do it." Her breath came in short beats, shallow, in and out through her throat, never reaching her lungs. Allison stared. "Allison-"

"I believe you."

"You- what?"

"I believe you." Allison pressed her lips together, straight-backed and cold across the hallway. "Only just, though."

"Really?" It was like coming up for air beneath a lifetime of the ocean. Vanya gasped for it. "You-"

"Jesus, Vanya," Allison said, and she crossed the hall, boots like gunshots on the floor, and flung her arms around Vanya.

It might have taken her minutes to start crying, or seconds, but sometime in between, Vanya sobbed into Allison's shoulder, drenching her expensive shirt.

"You said you had proof," Allison mumbled, into Vanya's hair.

"I do," Vanya managed. "I- I knew it was happening. What he was doing. I just couldn't get out."

"I figure," Allison said, arms tightening. "It's okay. We have to show the others, okay?" They separated, and Allison pressed her warm palm to Vanya's cheek, smearing away her tears.

"What about Diego?" Vanya stammered. Allison rolled her eyes.

"He's got twenty-four hours 'til it's due. The idiot can wait." Vanya managed a watery smile. "And listen-" Allison gave her a stern look- "if you feel at any point like you can't do it, you can't relive it, I'll pull you out. Okay? You don't have to be brave, Vanya."

**Author's Note:**

> Poor bby 💔


End file.
